128 comments:

Heh... so is someone in his administration really suggesting circumcision to combat AIDS?

You know, this is like the "always use a condom" thing...

You can have sub-standard promiscuous sex or you can keep your jeans zipped and give up a little of that for a penis that is not chaffed by a lifetime of exposure and then covered with a rain-jacket if you get "lucky."

Rush doesn't have the impact of a Facebook entry coming from Sarah Palin suggesting that free men in Alaska like her baby Trigg will need that extra insulation in the Winter. They are going after her family again like the CIA threatened to do to the 9/11 attack planners.

(I particularly like how certain folks live up to their reputations of having no sense of humor whatsoever with the self-righteous protestations over the frivolous. How dare you! You, an adult! You, a law professor! And like clock-work, too. How DARE someone find the world amusing?)

Why is it that when it's done to women by Islamists in Afghanistan it's called "genital mutiliation"

Because what is done to women is not the equivalent of male circumcision. It involves cutting off the clitoris (all of it that protrudes from the body, not just the protective hood which is equivalent to the foreskin), cutting off the labia, and sewing the raw edges of flesh together so that when the wound heals, the genital area is sealed up except for a small hole to allow urine and menstrual flow to pass.

The equivalent to cliterodectomy would be cutting off the entire head of the penis. I lack the imagination to think of anything you could do to a man that's unnatural enough to compare it to the rest of the procedure.

That's why we don't use the same name for both. Because they're not the same.

Is this in relation to the government calling for all males to be clean-cut? If it is, then why does the government care about whether or not you are circumcised or not? Really? Is this something that the government really cares about? Honestly?

This is all done for the best of intentions. The World Health Organisation is busier than ever whaat with the flu pandemic and the global warming imminent death crises. So please don't argue with the authorities of your friendly new New World Order.

Piercing a baby's ears is mutilation, too, and done without permission.

I don't think that's the equivalent to male circumcision, but it might be the same magnitude of difference between male circumcision and female circumcision.

The result of male circumcision is that the skin is toughened a bit... everything still works and sex is still pleasurable... the main complaint is that it would all be *better* natural.

Female circumcision is designed, on purpose, to make sex painful or at the very *best* completely not fun, ever, even a little bit.

It would be like, if we had a custom of permanently removing eye lashes for boys and cutting the whole eye-lids off of girls and then tried to say that both procedures were equivalent mutilation because in both cases the eyes were less protected.

Sorry to have offended you, Pogo, but I think that as a parent I have a right to choose. You would choose otherwise, and I respect that, but when it comes to my kid I think I should be able to call it.

"Because what is done to women is not the equivalent of male circumcision. "

yes it is. circumcision is barbaric and unnecessary. but it's NONE of the governments business.

unfortunately as the government becomes more and more paternal and controlling towards its citizens it becomes more likely to act like a parent... as long as you live in my country you will live by MY rules!!!

Limbaugh - By the way, leave our penises alone, too. This is getting out of hand. There is a story that some officials in the Obama administration are pushing for circumcision for all boys born in the USA to fight HIV/AIDS. Not that I'm against circumcision, but it's a family's decision. Leave our penises alone, too, Obama! You know who's going to be really upset about this news? NOCIRC, the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers. They're a San Francisco group, and they want to eliminate circumcision.

So much for the Obama vote from Titus-like gays in love with "Uncut Hogs".------------------------DADvocate said... Is this more magical thinking on Obama/the Dems part? My brother died from AIDS and he was circumcised.

As you undoubtably know, your brother likely did not catch AIDS from the "pitching" part of his game, but playing "catcher".

And I'm sorry that he caught HIV, then died. It is an insidious disease that I wish we COULD socially engineer away.

as Obama and Holder with their anti-American CIA witch hunt piss off Republicans so much that they won't be able to find even one Republican vote when they really need it - and they WILL need some Republican votes in the coming months,

as Democrats see their reelection prospects fade as far away as the end of Obama's deficits are starting to stand up to Obama's own Rahm Emmanuel and the Chicago Extortion Mob run out of the White House,

as Al Franken becomes fatter and even more of a liar while Rush Limbaugh slims down,

as the Main Stream Media falls all over itself to spin financial numbers as the "beginning of a recovery" - a phrase we will all be reading for the next 14-18 months - EVERY month,

Does circumcision make the penis more or less aesthetically appealing? My sense is that if it gave one an edge in the pursuit of sex, many men would take an interest in the procedure. See all the women in this country who undergo endless mutilation in pursuit of younger faces and bigger breasts.

Just earlier today, Senator McCain held a town hall in Phoenix (yes, that's where a bunch of wack-jobs brought assault rifles to Obama's event last week) and when he dared to say in response to a direct question that he felt that Obama understood the Constitution his answer was booed (twice) for it

Then again, among Republicans in our state, McCain is getting a significant challenge from Minuteman militia founder Chris Simcox. Only in today's political landscape in which the GOP is dominated and beholden to a small group of nuts (e.g. 'Birchers and birthers') would a real fruitcake like Simcox even be considered a serious candidate.

Actually, according to the best knowledge we currently have, the closest similarity in the female case to infant male prepucectomy would consist of:

cutting off most to all of the female prepuce, and

cutting off most to all of the inner labia, and

stripping out at least an inch-wide ring of the inner vaginal skin, then clamping the two resulting raw edges against each other with thousands of pounds of force in order to make them seal together.

This is the best set of parallel consequences we can currently estimate in the female case -- the stripping back of the attached-at-birth male foreskin, the callusing of the glans, the loss of thousands of nerve endings and decrease in skin mobility sensitivity from the unnatural shortening of the foreskin, and so on.

So in fact, it's the majority of female genital cuttings that are less harmful, as they consist primarily of a range of practices from light nicking to preputial and labial amputation. It is only the much rarer cases of full excision of all external tissue, including the clitoris, and the further monstrosity of infibulation, where the vagina is actually sewn almost completely closed, that exceed routine and ritual male prepucectomy in harm. Only the even more rare number of aboriginal subincisions, where almost the penis is cut open from the underside like a butterflied sausage, and permanently flattened out are meaningfully comparable to the worst of female genital cutting.

BTW, there is good reason for exclusively female-focused activists to endorse the equal criminalization of routine and ritual male genital amputation. As long as it is acceptable to cut one gender, the other gender will always be at risk as well. Many people in the world distinguish between adults and children far more than they do boys and girls in this area, so falsely asserting that male prepucectomy cannot possibly be compared with female genital cutting is self-defeating. It costs little to agree that all children should be protected from genital mutilation.

The most fundamental and basic argument against the practice, however, is the simple fact that nowhere in the medical literature has this unique status of default disposability ever been empirically justified. The standard of care for all other healthy, normal, non-pathogenic body parts is default retention, not amputation. There is literally no proper peer-reviewed research presenting a valid basis for treating the male prepuce any differently. The source of this unique and singular exception is ignorant custom, not objective and ethical professionalism.

In short, it doesn't matter what kind of supposed health justifications people claim. They do not and would not justify the amputation of any other body part, so it is therefore the responsibility of those asserting the acceptability of the practice to present a valid and supportable explanation as to why the male prepuce, solely and singularly, should be subject to a different, lower, and patently sexist standard.

They never, ever do this. In fact, they virtually never even admit that the argument exists. Any rational person will correctly conclude why: it is because they cannot overcome it. They cannot justify their position against it. They cannot fulfill their responsibility to explain why the male prepuce should be treated so differently in comparison to all other body parts, both male and female.

So they simply pretend their responsibility to do so doesn't even exist.

Synova you are correct. I lived in an African country for two years that had Muslims, Christians, and animists. Female circumcision was done as part of a tribal ritual, not a religious one. Where I lived, there were several tribes that did not circumcise their girls. All the rest did. I was told it was done to protect the chastity of the girls.

In Egypt, OTOH, it is done more widely and it appears they've tried to make it a religious thing. And throughout Africa and some parts of the Middle East, there are varying degrees of female circumcision. In any case, it is barbaric. Interestingly, it is also pushed very aggressively by women, not men, in many of these societies.

Me: "What female circumcision protects against... the ONLY thing it is portrayed as protecting against by those who do it... is promiscuity."

"This statement is not true. Many Muslim fathers believe, and the science supports this thesis, that girls having less sex leads to fewer STDs."

Oh, dear god.

You say my statement is not true and then you say the exact same thing as I did, that female circumcision is for chastity *only*. That the circumcision itself has not even a *claimed* affect on disease prevention.

The medical claim for male circumcision is that there is less transmission of disease WHEN MEN HAVE SEX.

Maybe before we force families to circumsize their sons, we could ask the government and the news media to be more candid about the hugely disproportionate transmission of HIV/AIDS by men having sex with men (MSM).

"I doubt, however, that you'll get principled debate from this crowd of child amputators."

Principled debate? From people who's "great idea" to oppose the routine circumcision of boys is by pretending that it's the same thing as the circumcision of girls?

This "crowd" has been pretty clearly on the side of *not* routinely circumcising boys or at the very *very* least not promoting male circumcision. I don't recall anyone, not even Pogo, saying boys *should* be circumcised, only that studies show medical benefits. Nothing about that says that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. So make your argument why not and maybe you'll persuade someone who wasn't previously persuaded.

It's not possible to have a "principled debate" with people in the midst of hysterics who then label anyone not displaying similar hysteria as "child amputators."

Sometimes people are just calling you on making a false or otherwise crappy argument.

Thank you, Florida. I've been at this a while now. I know I won't get many sensible responses -- if any, really -- but that's alright. I'm okay with it.

I do appreciate yours, though.

I'm okay with not receiving meaningful feedback mainly because I moved to an r-strategy rather than a K-strategy several years ago. Over the years it has been made abundantly clear to me that some people can and do get it, and some people cannot and do not. I don't waste time on the latter anymore. I say my piece and move on. There's simply not enough profit in struggling to convince people who have too much of their identity invested in their submission to the will of the tribe.

I use that phrase generically, not implicatively, BTW, because another of my conclusions has been that the younger the age at which non-medical genital (or other) cutting is done, the more such practices are done to establish tribal control and authority over the parents.

Once parents become complicit in the abuse and violation of their own children through the instigation (often threats) of the tribe and its authority figures, they become even more likely to obey and submit to the tribe and its authority figures in the future. Because of their repressed guilt and remorse over having undeniably harmed their child, they come to believe in and submit to the primacy of the tribe and its authority figures even more.

It's a basic psychological defensive mechanism that has been used to control and manipulate people throughout human history. Once you get people to do an abominable thing at your instruction, they become more likely to follow your instructions in the future simply so that they can better rationalize that first awful action to themselves.

Save_the_rustbelt -- on the other hand, however, I was my father's sole caregiver from 1996 following his massive hemo stroke until his recent death in February of this year (his limitations were primarily physical). During that time, I was exposed to the circumcision issue, including the aspect of geriatric care. I investigated that as part of my self-education on the subject, and my findings were that intact male geriatric care patients only have foreskin problems when their care is flatly substandard.

Could you please ask your wife about sores and lesions in older women, and the proposed responses to that, and post her reply? I would very much appreciate it.

"The medical claim for female genital mutilation is that there is less transmission of sexually transmitted diseases that lead to cervical cancer when women have sex with men."

Oh, bullsh*t. You making this stuff up doesn't make it true. You link to any sort of medical journal or study that even addresses the issue. I caught you out on the claim about chastity and now you're pretending something different. There *are* studies about male circumcision and AIDS.

Does that apply to the federal prohibition against female genital mutilation as well?

And if not, why not?

Synova: Principled debate? From people who's "great idea" to oppose the routine circumcision of boys is by pretending that it's the same thing as the circumcision of girls?

Actually, as I posted earlier, routine and ritual male prepucectomy is usually slightly worse than the majority of genital cutting most commonly performed on girls. I don't criticize people for not knowing this because it's not easy to find reliable citations of the real figures. Unfortunatenly, female genital cutting activists tend to engage in deceit by combining various forms together for their statistical soundbite claims.

As to principled debate, perhaps you missed this also:

In short, it doesn't matter what kind of supposed health justifications people claim. They do not and would not justify the amputation of any other body part, so it is therefore the responsibility of those asserting the acceptability of the practice to present a valid and supportable explanation as to why the male prepuce, solely and singularly, should be subject to a different, lower, and patently sexist standard.

They never, ever do this. In fact, they virtually never even admit that the argument exists. Any rational person will correctly conclude why: it is because they cannot overcome it. They cannot justify their position against it. They cannot fulfill their responsibility to explain why the male prepuce should be treated so differently in comparison to all other body parts, both male and female.

So they simply pretend their responsibility to do so doesn't even exist.

"You link to any sort of medical journal or study that even addresses the issue. I caught you out on the claim about chastity and now you're pretending something different. There *are* studies about male circumcision and AIDS."

Sigh ...

It is widely accepted, and scientific studies over decades have proven a direct link between sexually transmitted diseases and cervical cancer.

Here's just one story to begin your education:http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/08/25/cancer-penile-hpv.html

Here is the WebMD topic page on cervical cancer (since I know you're not going to take my word for it):

http://www.webmd.com/cancer/tc/cervical-cancer-topic-overview

WebMD: "Most cervical cancer is caused by a virus called human papillomavirus, or HPV. You can get HPV by having sexual contact with someone who has it."

It is widely accepted in many Muslim societies that preventing girls from having sex lowers the incidence of sexually transmitted disease and significantly reduces a woman's risk of cervical cancer.

Many Islamic fathers use this justification of "preventing cancer" when having their daughters' genitals mutilated ... just as many parents use the STD justification to have their boys mutilated.

When you advocate for male circumcision by making arguments that it reduces the liklihood of disease, you open the door to others who wish to circumcise females for the exact. same. reason.

The US military has known for about a century that circumcised men have much lower rates of STD's both acquisition and transmission. As others have noted, penile cancer and certain other conditions are rare to non-existent among circumcised males, and the circumcised have lower rates of urinary tract infections.

"When you advocate for male circumcision by making arguments that it reduces the liklihood of disease, you open the door to others who wish to circumcise females for the exact. same. reason."

Except for the inconvenient truth that male circumcision *does* seem to result in fewer STD's and female circumcision does *not*.

In the end, you don't want people to point out REAL things because it weakens your argument. An aversion to truth does not make your case stronger. And you do not want people to point out weaknesses in your moral equivalences because it also weakens your argument.

Actually, Tully, the clitoris has a prepuce, or foreskin, too. And they do get cut off little girls.

Maybe you can't fix stupid, and maybe you can, but I hope I just fixed ignorant, at least a little bit.

Along those lines, would you mind telling our viewing audience what the comparative risk rates are for meatal stenosis versus penile cancer, STDs, UTIs, and the rest of the things on your list?

Not that they really matter, because, again, it doesn't matter what kind of supposed health justifications people claim. They do not and would not justify the amputation of any other body part, so it is therefore the responsibility of those asserting the acceptability of the practice to present a valid and supportable explanation as to why the male prepuce, solely and singularly, should be subject to a different, lower, and patently sexist standard.

They never, ever do this. In fact, they virtually never even admit that the argument exists. Any rational person will correctly conclude why: it is because they cannot overcome it. They cannot justify their position against it. They cannot fulfill their responsibility to explain why the male prepuce should be treated so differently in comparison to all other body parts, both male and female.

So they simply pretend their responsibility to do so doesn't even exist.

In short, it doesn't matter what kind of supposed health justifications people claim. They do not and would not justify the amputation of any other body part, so it is therefore the responsibility of those asserting the acceptability of the practice to present a valid and supportable explanation as to why the male prepuce, solely and singularly, should be subject to a different, lower, and patently sexist standard.

They never, ever do this. In fact, they virtually never even admit that the argument exists. Any rational person will correctly conclude why: it is because they cannot overcome it. They cannot justify their position against it. They cannot fulfill their responsibility to explain why the male prepuce should be treated so differently in comparison to all other body parts, both male and female.

So they simply pretend their responsibility to do so doesn't even exist.

Also, again, according to the best knowledge we currently have, the closest similarity in the female case to infant male prepucectomy would consist of:

cutting off most to all of the female prepuce, and

cutting off most to all of the inner labia, and

stripping out at least an inch-wide ring of the inner vaginal skin, then clamping the two resulting raw edges against each other with thousands of pounds of force in order to make them seal together.

This is the best set of parallel consequences we can currently estimate in the female case -- the stripping back of the attached-at-birth male foreskin, the callusing of the glans, the loss of thousands of nerve endings and decrease in skin mobility sensitivity from the unnatural shortening of the foreskin, and so on.

So in fact, it's the majority of female genital cuttings that are less harmful, as they consist primarily of a range of practices from light nicking to preputial and labial amputation. It is only the much rarer cases of full excision of all external tissue, including the clitoris, and the further monstrosity of infibulation, where the vagina is actually sewn almost completely closed, that exceed routine and ritual male prepucectomy in harm. Only the even more rare number of aboriginal subincisions, where almost the penis is cut open from the underside like a butterflied sausage, and permanently flattened out are meaningfully comparable to the worst of female genital cutting.

BTW, there is good reason for exclusively female-focused activists to endorse the equal criminalization of routine and ritual male genital amputation. As long as it is acceptable to cut one gender, the other gender will always be at risk as well. Many people in the world distinguish between adults and children far more than they do boys and girls in this area, so falsely asserting that male prepucectomy cannot possibly be compared with female genital cutting is self-defeating. It costs little to agree that all children should be protected from genital mutilation.

I agree with the whole anti-preventative angle, i.e., I think it's rather a failure to start lopping off body parts that might be problematic. (We should note that some women DO get preventative mastectomies.)

Apparently it's a big deal in Africa because they like dry condomless sex.

The horror stories of female circumcision make it seem much worse, but they are horror stories. You can find plenty of true horror circumcision stories, too.

Penn Gilette defends the "Bullsh!t" show where they talk about circumcision (at 1:37) here.

I'm pretty iffy on the notion that a "better argument" is to insist that the other side of the argument be the one to make a case.

I also am far far from convinced that male circumcision, as normally practiced, is the equivalent to what you describe in a girl. Girls are not boys and just because certain bits have correlations in the other gender doesn't mean the impact of a mutilation is the same point by point. A man losing a breast, for example, would not impact functionality the way it would for a woman who lost a breast. If you cut off all of a girl's external genitalia she could still have children. If you did that on a boy he couldn't. We aren't the same anymore and that a boy and girl start out as a little lump that is all the same and then gets folds in different places is as meaningful, really, as showing how a human foot translates to the leg of horse. Consequently, the argument is not persuasive.

The argument that medical risk is not sufficient reason to amputate parts is likely to get traction with most people because it doesn't rely on outright denying that there might actually *be* a medical argument to make. We do have parts that aren't functional, or generally not considered so, such as tonsils and appendixes and would likely be removed just on principle if it could be done easily. People may honestly feel that a foreskin is similarly useless. So explain that it is not.

The level of alarm demanded by those opposing "child amputators" has a problem as well because there are a large number of circumcised men who don't seem to think they're missing anything dreadfully important. That particular problem would be easier to get over by arguing that the difference is not huge, but is important.

The people to convince, everything said and done, are young women who have not yet had their first son.

You really *really* are not going to convince them with the drama when they can't even get the men in their lives to give a clear yes or no to the question.

But I suppose if someone had a strong family history of breast cancer they might go that route.

That's it, Synova. I've read about women whose mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts got breast cancer and who had mastectomies as a precaution. Doctors used to frown upon this but they don't so much anymore, especially since some kinds of breast cancer are correlated to certain genetic traits.

Acksiom: You're spouting pseudo-medical claptrap. I suggest you take a moment to look at how male and female genetalia differentiate during gestation. You'll learn that your proposition that 'female circumcision = male circumcision' is as bogus as the rest of your pap.

What are the labia minorae in women turn into the scrotum for males. The labia majorae are the shaft of the penis. The clitoris is the glans and the clitoral prepuce is the male prepuce, i.e. foreskin.

Removing the clitoral hood is equivalent to male circumcision. Anything else's being removed is far more dramatic and moves into the realm of 'mutilation', even for those who believe in male circumcision.

Synova: I'm pretty iffy on the notion that a 'better argument' is to insist that the other side of the argument be the one to make a case.

Sounds like you're tacitly admitting that the anti-integrity side is not making a case at all, then.

One side is for the application of multiple existing default standards based upon objective reality, and the other is for the application of a special, unique, exclusive status, without any objective support whatsoever.

You appear to think that the first side is responsible for making their argument, but the second side is not.

I also am far far from convinced that male circumcision, as normally practiced, is the equivalent to what you describe in a girl.

And now we see the hellish deviltry of my infernal cunning. Muhaha.

You provide no specifics whatsoever about the normal practice of routine and ritual male prepucectomy to invalidate my comparison.

And the far far most likely reason for this is that you do not in fact have more than the vaguest idea of what the normal practice of routine and ritual male prepucectomy consists of and what its common consequences are.

And the only way you can provide such specifics to back up your position is by doing the research needed.

Unfortunately, however, the facts are on my side, because what I presented above is indeed the best, closest, and most accurate parallel we can draw between routine and ritual male prepucectomy and comparable female genital cutting with our current knowledge.

Which means you either eventually end up agreeing with me, or are exposed as not actually knowing what you're talking about.

Synova: Girls are not boys and just because certain bits have correlations in the other gender doesn't mean the impact of a mutilation is the same point by point.

And likewise, individuals are not other individuals and just because certain female bits have correlations in other females doesn't meant the impact of a mutilation is the same point by point that way, either.

Yet somehow that same application of reasoning does not invalidate the characterization of all female genital cutting as inexcusable abuse.

Any argument you make for distinguishing between male and female genital cutting can be turned around and applied to distinguish between different kinds of female genital cutting, and thereby similarly used to excuse some kinds of female genital cutting because of the different severity of others.

A man losing a breast, for example, would not impact functionality the way it would for a woman who lost a breast.

And a woman losing her inner labia would not impact functionality the way it would for a woman who lost a breast.

So yet again, somehow that same application of reasoning does not invalidate the characterization of all female genital cutting as inexcusable abuse.

And also again, any argument you make for distinguishing between male and female genital cutting can be turned around and applied to distinguish between different kinds of female genital cutting, and thereby similarly used to excuse some kinds of female genital cutting because of the different severity of others.

If you cut off all of a girl's external genitalia she could still have children. If you did that on a boy he couldn't.

And similarly, if you cut off all of a girl's external genitalia she could still have children, but if you cut out her reproductive organs, she couldn't.

So yet again, somehow that same application of reasoning does not invalidate the characterization of all female genital cutting as inexcusable abuse.

And also again, any argument you make for distinguishing between male and female genital cutting can be turned around and applied to distinguish between different kinds of female genital cutting, and thereby similarly used to excuse some kinds of female genital cutting because of the different severity of others.

We aren't the same anymore and that a boy and girl start out as a little lump that is all the same and then gets folds in different places is as meaningful, really, as showing how a human foot translates to the leg of horse. Consequently, the argument is not persuasive.

And all girls are not the same either, and that two girls both start out as a little lump that is all the same and then gets different folds in places is as meaningful, really, as showing how a female prepuce translates to the female labia.

So yet again, somehow that same application of reasoning does not invalidate the characterization of all female genital cutting as inexcusable abuse.

And also again, any argument you make for distinguishing between male and female genital cutting can be turned around and applied to distinguish between different kinds of female genital cutting, and thereby similarly used to excuse some kinds of female genital cutting because of the different severity of others.

Synova: The argument that medical risk is not sufficient reason to amputate parts

Wait, what exactly do you mean by "medical risk"?

We're not talking about risk here. We're talking about inherent and inevitable harm. Prepucectomy is inherently and inevitably harmful. All amputation of healthy, normal, nonpathogenic tissue is harmful, by definition.

This isn't about comparative risk. This is about inherent and inevitable harm versus merely the possibility of potential benefit.

is likely to get traction with most people because it doesn't rely on outright denying that there might actually *be* a medical argument to make.

Except I'm doing the exact opposite of that; I'm demanding that they actually make an actual medical argument.

Again, it doesn't matter what kind of supposed health justifications people claim. They do not and would not justify the amputation of any other body part, so it is therefore the responsibility of those asserting the acceptability of the practice to present a valid and supportable explanation as to why the male prepuce, solely and singularly, should be subject to a different, lower, and patently sexist standard.

And they're not doing it, and neither are you.

We do have parts that aren't functional, or generally not considered so, such as tonsils and appendixes and would likely be removed just on principle if it could be done easily.

What principle would that be?

People may honestly feel that a foreskin is similarly useless. So explain that it is not.

Certainly. The foreskin is not useless in the same way that the female labia, clitoral hood, and vaginal skin are not useless.

The people to convince, everything said and done, are young women who have not yet had their first son.

Actually, no. The people to convince are the doctors who are doing the genital cutting, and the hospitals that offer it by default.

You really *really* are not going to convince them with the drama when they can't even get the men in their lives to give a clear yes or no to the question.

Yes, and that's one good reason why I don't try to convince them with drama in forums such as this.

In fact, the best way to convince young women appears to be unaltered, unedited videos of actual circumcisions, such as the one available here:

I suggest you take a moment to look at how male and female genetalia differentiate during gestation. You'll learn that your proposition that 'female circumcision = male circumcision' is as bogus as the rest of your pap.

Except, of course, for how that's not my proposition.

Read my original statments again, emphasized and noted for clarity:

Actually, according to the best knowledge we currently have, the closest similarity (NB: "similarity" is not "equal to") in the female case to infant male prepucectomy would consist of:

cutting off most to all of the female prepuce, and

cutting off most to all of the inner labia, and

stripping out at least an inch-wide ring of the inner vaginal skin, then clamping the two resulting raw edges against each other with thousands of pounds of force in order to make them seal together.

This is the best set of parallel consequences (NB: I am addressing the functional consequences involved, which in this context matter far more than the differentiation in development that occurs) we can currently estimate (NB: again, "estimate" is categorically not "equal to") in the female case -- the stripping back of the attached-at-birth male foreskin, the callusing of the glans, the loss of thousands of nerve endings and decrease in skin mobility sensitivity from the unnatural shortening of the foreskin, and so on (NB: again, all these specific details further underline the fact that I am addressing the functional consequences involved, which in this context matter far more than the differentiation in development that occurs).

John Burgess: What are the labia minorae in women turn into the scrotum for males.

However, the labia minor are also functionally erogenous tissues that help to protect the junctional and actual mucosa of the vaginal vestibule from keratinization, similar to the male external prepuce and glans.

Again, I am addressing the functional consequences involved, which in this context matter far more than the differentiation in development that occurs.

The labia majorae are the shaft of the penis.

And again, I am addressing the functional consequences involved, which in this context matter far more than the differentiation in development that occurs.

The clitoris is the glans and the clitoral prepuce is the male prepuce, i.e. foreskin.

And the majority of the clitoris is internal, and the male prepuce serves as a rolling bearing during intromissive heterosexual intimacy, while the female prepuce does not. These are functional differences, which in this context matter far more than the differentiation in development that occurs.

Likewise, functionally, and to a certain extent even innervationally, the inner vaginal skin is similar to the inner preputial skin. That is partially why the removal of a non-trivial amount of it is necessary to parallel the loss of inner preputial skin in routine and ritual male prepucectomy.

Removing the clitoral hood is equivalent to male circumcision.

Only if you deliberately or incompetently ignore the functional consequences involved, which in this context matter far more than the differentiation in development that occurs.

Anything else's being removed is far more dramatic and moves into the realm of 'mutilation', even for those who believe in male circumcision.

Except, of course, in terms of the functional consequences involved, which in this context matter far more than the differentiation in development that occurs.

It's very simple. You cannot get an accurate parallel going exclusively by development differentiation. That is because the male and female prepuces have significantly different functions, sizes, compositions, and so on, and the consequences to the male and female genitalia and their sexual functioning are also significantly different.

You apparently are not aware of the full range of functional consequences from routine and ritual male prepucectomy to not only male sexual function alone but intromissive heterosexual functioning as well, including its effects on female partners. I suggest you do more research, beginning with CIRP for medical citations and the intactivist and foreskin restoration message lists for case studies.

I think it's a bit crappy to start saying "the only men who care about having been circumcised aren't real men."

"Man up" is really a pretty disgusting argument in this case: Not all circumcisions are equal and some result in--well, let's not forget David Reimer.

Modern, non-Jewish circumcision was meant to reduce male masturbation. That's where it comes from(*). The fact that it's passed through several other justifications (conformity, aesthetics, health) doesn't change that.

I do think parents ought to be made to watch a video of circumcision, just as prospective aborters should watch a video of that.

*I don't think it's comparable to female circumcision in practice, with female operations often being done at puberty, in tents, by non-doctors, etc., but I want to point out that it's very much the same drive. That is, both are borne of sexual suppression.

Other points of interest: There is a foreskin market; according to Will Durant, traditional Hebrew circumcisions were purely token, not the big glans-exposing operation that they become once Jews started trying to pass themselves off as goyim to the shiksa.

I was medically circumcised shortly after birth, as were all the boys in my family, and, frankly, am glad of it. If I had to make the decision again, to have it done back then, I would have it done in a heart beat. I would probably also have it done now, knowing what I know. I just think of the time and energy I have saved over the decades from having to clean under there.

But I was also struck by a female OB/Gyn. Her pet peeve was that uncircumcised guys were always passing stuff to their female partners. Whatever it was, would often not affect the guys, so they were just fine with being uncircumcised. But the women they passed it to did show symptoms, and she had to clean those problems up on her patients.

Worse, she thought were her male colleagues, esp. the urologists and pediatricians, who at the time were so vehemently opposing male circumcision. Again, the male doctors weren't seeing the problems, she was. So, she was ready to circumcise some of those male doctors.